Hyunmoo-3


The Hyunmoo-3 is a supersonic cruise missile fielded by the South Korean military designed by Agency for Defense Development. The name Hyunmoo comes from the mythical Black Tortoise described as the "Guardian of the Northern Sky", perhaps hinting North Korea.

Design and development

As a signatory of the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime, South Korea agrees to refrain from importing a non-indigenous ballistic missile with a warhead larger than, or a range of more than. Historically a bilateral agreement between the ROK and US additionally limited indigenous South Korean produced ballistic missiles in both range and warhead size. Therefore, heavy emphasis was put on developing long-range cruise missiles by the South Korean government. With the introduction of Hyunmoo-3, the Republic of Korea Army created the Missile Command in order to efficiently manage these missiles.
Despite the name, the Hyunmoo-3 bears no resemblance to the previous Hyunmoo SSM, which were improved versions of Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles that were converted into short-range high-speed surface-to-surface ballistic missiles in response to North Korea's Scud-B and Nodong-1 missile threats. Instead, the new missile's designs are strikingly similar to the United States Tomahawk cruise missile. It is powered by a turbofan engine, and has a maximum payload of of conventional explosive. The guidance systems consist of inertial guidance system and global positioning system.

Variants

Hyunmoo-3A, which was nicknamed "Eagle-1" during the testing, has a range of 500 km, while Hyunmoo-3B, nicknamed "Eagle-2" Cheonryong, has a range of. Hyunmoo-3C, or "Eagle-3", will be capable of striking its target up to away. This is a significant improvement from Hyunmoo I which had a range of and Hyunmoo-2A, which only has a range of, both of which were ballistic and not cruise missiles.
s and KSS-III-class submarines will be equipped with these Chonryong submarine-launched cruise missiles inside their K-VLS cells.
A Hyunmoo-3B air-launched cruise missile with over range exists and it is called Boramae.
A submarine-launched cruise missile called the Haeseong III is designed to be launched underwater from submarines. It is actually the designation for the Hyunmoo-3 cruise missile when launched from a submarine and is unrelated to the SSM-700K Haeseong missile design.

Operators